In the Floating Castle
by TobyKikami
Summary: Stories about various baddies and former baddies. Discontinued
1. Grey Wolf: Till Sunrise

**In the Floating Castle**   
Grey Wolf: Till Sunrise

He stared at the wall but did not see it. His voice was the only noise in the room, a low, persistent murmur. "He'll come, I know he will. He'll come, I know he will."   
Grey Wolf had been repeating those six words for a time, holding onto them as if they were a lifeline-and in a way, they were. He would come. He had to.   
After all Tiger was so much stronger, so much braver, so much more all the good things and so much less all the bad things than his younger brother ever was or ever could be. And he had always come before, hadn't he? Hadn't he?   
If he slept, his mind had slipped seamlessly back into waking, with no dreams that he could begin to remember. He was utterly still, without a single visible fidget, as he waited for the sun.   
_ If your brother has not come by sunrise, I'll have to insist that you hear me out._   
Tiger would have to come by then, he decided. How many days had he been here, in this room with no door (he had inspected it thoroughly, and for the life of him he could not figure out how he had come to be in there-the window was not the sort that opened)? Two? Three? Surely he would come, surely it was all lies, surely… 

*** 

This time he knew he had fallen asleep, because the wall before his eyes was now considerably brighter than the last time he had seen it. Sunrise had come and was already over. It was full day now.   
Grey Wolf jerked around, his eager cry rising and then choking back down.   
The room was empty.   
He stared at the floor, at the ceiling, for a time before he fully realized that Tiger was not there at all.   
Even if his brother had entered then he would not have known because of the liquid clouding his eyes. Were the lies true, then, after all?   
After a while the voice began, sounding very soothing and sensible, and Grey Wolf heard him out. 

*** 

He left the room after the sun had set (the door had appeared when it had been called for). _I'll show you. _The anger had departed around midday, leaving a grim desire- he knew exactly what it was a desire for. _You thought I was too weak to be bothered with, did you? Someday I am going to show you just how weak I am._   
His eyes looked at everything, but they had stopped seeing. 


	2. Gali: Accidents Will Happen

DISCLAIMER: If I owned Monster Rancher, the whole series would be very different. Starting with more screen time for Grey Wolf. 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: First off, a big thank you to NhMagee and Dark Scimitar for reviewing and letting me know the Monster Rancher section wasn't completely dead.This one's from Gali's point of view. He's a pain to write, so revisions may definitely come later.   
"Mu" will be spelled that way because "Moo" just looks ridiculous.   
And if there are any other points that don't mesh with the series, please review and let me know.****

**Gali: Accidents Will Happen** In the beginning I was a literati consisting of one, the only one out of four destined to be Mu's top generals who could truly read, let alone write.   
It sounds completely outrageous, does it not?   
I was the most educated of us all in matters not related to battle (I must credit this to the human who years ago went to the shrine and shouted "Unlock." I made her death quick). And, as far as I know, I still am.   
The youngest, Grey Wolf, could recognize a few words, but certainly not enough to be considered proper reading. Rather, it was more conclusions drawn from experience- that so-and-so pattern meant "fruit," that another meant "fish." The same went for Pixie.   
And, of course, Naga had no idea in the least how to even begin to read. He didn't care about his lack, either. In Mu's eyes his raw strength more than made up for it. 

*** 

Reading was not the only thing Naga could not learn. Another thing was swimming.   
Of course, I cannot exactly swim either, for obvious reasons. But with Naga the reasons were not quite as obvious.   
You see, whenever he entered water of the appropriate depth, he promptly, invariably, sank. Like a rock with boulders tied to it. Several methods were tried to cure him of this (it would be such a shameful waste if he happened to slip and drown, would it not?). None of them worked.   
If I was physically capable of smiling, I believe that whenever I review the memory of exactly how this flaw was learned of, I would do so.   
It was near a lake- remember the lake, it played a large part in this little drama I am recounting. We had landed nearby- what reason Mu gave for this, I no longer recall; it's possible that he never gave a reason in the first place. Grey Wolf had complained a day or so earlier that I had more likely than not tampered with the food because it "didn't smell right." Perhaps that was the reason we landed.   
Grey Wolf could swim, and he took the opportunity to show off this fact. I did not care in the least. It would have been an entirely forgettable day if Naga hadn't gotten off with the rest of us.   
Accidents will happen.   
Yes, I am sure it was an accident.   
It became necessary for him to learn afterward, but on that day he hadn't been more than half a year, if that, in the big happy family; his dedication to Mu was still absolute, totally uninfluenced by politics. Nobody who wished to survive kept this mindset for very long. I had never had it.   
But on that day, Grey Wolf still had it. It simply would never have occurred to him to deliberately cause Naga's demise.   
But Naga, of course, didn't see it that way. 

*** 

Now permit me to set the scene. I was on the other side of the lake from Naga. Pixie was in between, sitting down with her feet in the water. Various others scattered about- they were not important. Grey Wolf left the water at the point where Naga was standing and began to shake his fur out. Naga took a step back, presumably to keep from being spattered, then slipped and fell into the lake, which just happened to be quite deep.   
If you heard him tell it, he would probably claim that Grey Wolf pushed him or some such nonsense. Do not, under any circumstances, believe it.   
I did not know he could not swim. None of us knew. That was why we stood there like fools, looking at the water, during which time he half drowned.   
Perhaps _that_ was what he was so angry about afterward.   



	3. Naga: Blue Eyes

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Monster Rancher or any of the characters depicted therein. I have made up certain things, such as Gali's backstory. 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: To Alex Warlorn: You want to know what happened? (Spoiler warning!) OK the bare-bones version: Grey Wolf thinks Tiger abandoned him (not true). Tiger fatally wounds Grey Wolf but the latter gets good before he dies.   
OK, Naga is an even bigger pain to write than Gali, so this one is probably sub-par.   
If there are any points that don't mesh with the series please review and let me know. Oh, what the heck, please review anyway.   
If you read this far, thanks. Could you read just a little further, please? 

**Naga: Blue Eyes** Of course everyone believes Gali.   
He's so _good_, right? While I'm the _horrible_, _terrible_, oh-so-_cruel_-and-_mean_-and-_filthy_ purple lizard who kills for fun, right? I don't pretend to be anything other than that. Unlike certain monsters named Gali who I won't name.   
_ What did you just say?_   
Shut your mouth and listen. I'm not the one who had happy fluffy first years with humans who apparently were more decent than average. I'm not the one who got spoiled rotten. I'm not the one who tied up my brain in knots contemplating stupid questions because I didn't have anything better to do.   
I'm not the one who randomly decided to make the entire city go kaboom and skip off and join Mu because, again, I didn't have anything better to do.   
I. Am. Not. Like. Gali. Whatsoever. _Is that clear?_   
I'm glad we've come to an understanding. 

*** 

You say you want to hear about Grey Wolf? Let me guess. You're going to tell all of your friends what I said, so they can all laugh at how stupid I am. How jealous I am of clever little Blue Eyes -   
Yes, I said clever.   
I'll call him Blue Eyes if I damn well want to… Brown Eyes.   
Oh, you're scared I damaged him for life, then? That I screwed his eyes around backwards crooked-wise? That I opened him up and mucked with his insides? You are so paranoid I think I'm going to laugh. Just why would I want to do that? Do I look like an idiot to you?   
… no, don't answer that. I know what you're going to say.   
Really, Mu had a corner on any mucking.   
What happened-? How do you expect me to know? Why don't you go talk to Mu, I'm sure _he_ could tell you. What _I'd_ like to know is just why you let Blue Eyes grow up so gullible.   
All right, here's the situation: You're being told that your idol who you think can do no wrong –in Blue Eyes' case that would be you- just ran off to save his own hide. Don't forget that the very someone who is telling you this attacked the two of you just a while ago, not to mention knocked you out himself.   
Did I mention he seems to want you to join his army?   
Wouldn't the situation seem a bit off?   
Brown Eyes. Back off before I take off your head. I MEAN IT.   
… there. That's much better.   
He believed it, Brown Eyes, otherwise he wouldn't have wanted to kill you. Get over it. 

*** 

What would you know about it?   
Easy for you to say. You have better things to look to. You have Blue Eyes. You have all your friends to back you up.   
I have me. That'll have to do. And I didn't have anything better to look to then and I don't now, so get lost, you!   
…what _now_?   
Do I look like I can read minds to you? How would I know what he thinks? Why don't you go ask him yourself, Tiger of the Wind?   



	4. Pixie: Always Remember

First off: An EXTRA-big thank you to everyone who reviewed chapters two and three. Please bring any inconsistencies to my attention.

* * *

**Pixie: Always Remember**

You'd think I would've gotten over it by now.

Mu's shuffled off the mortal coil, at least as far as anyone can tell. You don't see any monsters with his symbol anymore- not that that's a _bad_ thing, it's just that somehow I keep expecting them, they've been around for so long.

Some things won't go away just because you want them to. Sometimes I have… dreams. And in those dreams are everything I want to forget.

Those are the ones I always remember.

* * *

Maybe if I think about it more during the day it won't come out at night… 

Gali. Okay, better think about Gali first. He was quite the rich brat- I'm using the word "brat" loosely here-roughly twelve years older than I- I'm guessing thirty. He had been the most educated (by the standards by which humans are judged) of all of us. At the start he was the only one of the Four who could read and write.

He'd razed his town of origin, claiming it had been done on his own- though I doubt he was _that _powerful- and then went off and joined Mu. I gathered that much. He wasn't much for revealing all the details; nobody was, really. We'd all just assumed that the humans had done something Unspeakably Horrible to him, and he'd exacted retribution. Just. Like. That.

Now that I look back I see how stupid an explanation that was. Those sorts of humans were never much for giving us education equivalent to theirs, if that; they wouldn't want us to get dangerous ideas. It's safe to say that Gali's learning was actually higher than what most humans had. Therefore, it couldn't have been so bad as we thought.

Knowing him, it's quite possible he did it out of boredom.

Once he recited a list of poisons that could cause an agonizing demise, many of them undetectable (of course there are few means to determine cause of death from a Lost Disk), at least five of them real, and we were all wary when eating around him after that little display. I'm sure he had quite a laugh over it.

When I picture what his mind must have been like I think of string knots, looped around one another and tied into bigger knots and twisted into something that could take a thousand years to unravel.

* * *

Grey Wolf was perhaps the most quiet of any of us, never bothering with anything like Gali's officious shows of learning or Naga's assertions of strength. By silence, I suppose, he avoided making slips of the tongue that could cost one quite a chunk of respect. If the slips were particularly bad, loyalty might be called into question. Nobody wanted that.

Of course, there was never any question about _his _loyalty.

You only spoke to him if it accomplished a purpose besides relieving boredom. That was the unspoken rule. A random Jell once attempted to engage him in conversation concerning the weather. The Jell just barely survived; everyone else got the point. If you didn't have a message or something of the sort, you waited for him to speak to you, and unless you happened to be Mu you had to keep your replies as short as his statements; refrain from rambling on. I was quite satisfied with that arrangement.

Talking, of course, was the usual diversion in between training sessions; there wasn't much else to do. Grey Wolf put in extra time; if not he could often be found at the spot in the castle unofficially designated his area, staring off at the sky. He was especially disagreeable when interrupted during those times

He put me in mind of deep water, full of dangerous things, so deep I didn't dare try and see what was in it.

* * *

And Naga- I didn't really know much of anything about him. He certainly wasn't in the same way Gali was- he couldn't read a word and was proud of the fact. Couldn't swim, either, though that didn't matter so much. All the subtlety of a landslide. What I saw, what that came to mind when I thought _Naga_, was just another strong monster who happened to be so much stronger than so many others that he was promoted to the Four. 

I'm sure there must have been deeper water, a knot or two, to him as well, but all I ever saw, all I ever remembered, was the obvious shallows, straight and predictable string.

* * *

Now that I look back I wonder why I stayed with Mu. It must have made sense to me then, but now it makes no sense at all. I should have known back then, before it got as far as it did. I really should have known…

* * *

This part has been tweaked due to a goof-up involving timelines and Big Blue, pointed out by Alex Warlorn. My bad. 

And to answer his questions (spoiler warning!): Naga got knocked over the side of a cliff by Mocchi's attack but grabbed onto the edge. Holly offered to pull him back up, after which the other six also offered to do so. He let go of the edge and went splat.  
In the last episode Genki got home, and he knew it wasn't a dream because he was still wearing the shoes he got in the second episode.


	5. Captain Salamander: This Honor Stuff

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I do not own Monster Rancher, otherwise I would make absolutely certain it would still be on. Names for characters that were previously known only by species name and sometimes title were given by Yours Truly. Please don't sue.

Some elements from the Monster Rancher 2 game, like the IMA, Colart Tea, and actual ranches (let's be honest: How many ranches are on the Monster Rancher show?), have been added. I don't own those either. I hope nobody minds.  
Please review and bring any inconsistencies with canon, just plain awful word arrangements, and other lovely stuff to my attention.

WARNINGS: This fic contains some possibly-disturbing images and a bunch of other stuff, including monsters apparently getting very-much-needed shrink appointments. (Incidentally, whoever he's talking to, it's not Tiger)

Rufus: This Honor Stuff

First off, don't call me Rufus. Anything but Rufus.

There used to be some sort of a pixie on the Montgomery, now I don't remember exactly what kind. She wasn't really spectacular, never got past D class. Just one of the ones that got sent to the D class cups for easy gold. I remember after a year or two fighting they stopped being excited and all had these really bored looks, like they wanted to say "Here we go again" but didn't dare. This pixie could read, sure, she was one of the ones we on the ranch got when there was something to be read, but she wasn't very good at that either. The problem was her name. It was Ruth.

You don't know what it's like, do you, having everyone and his brother come up and say, "Hey Ruth, could you read something for me?"

I know some of the others kept their names. They were given by humans, sure, but it was about the only different thing they'd got from all those others. They mostly had better sorts of names, like Drake and Salazar. Not one of them kept a name as dumb as Rufus. And I didn't keep it either. Just because Mu's whole thing's gone crashing down in flames doesn't mean I have to take it back, does it?

Just call me Captain Salamander.

* * *

You know about Centaur. I really never figured out what was so great about him. 

Sure he could've been a lot stronger, probably could've kicked Grey Wolf's arse all the way across the continent if he wanted. Could've taken on Grey Wolf and Naga at the same time. Would've gotten some pretty bad scratches, sure, but if he'd done all he could he probably could've done it. But he didn't do it. This honor stuff was why he didn't. He'd got too much of this honor stuff for his own good.

Tell me truly what good honor does. It just holds you back from what you could be, what you could do.

Centaur was supposed to be one of the good guys, good guys being people who fight us, because we're supposed to be the bad guys. You know after they took the town (we weren't there. We were freelancing then, just plain old under command of Mu), this story was going around with the Cabalos (you might think it's just another story, but Murasaki saw it and told me so and she never lies. We're not friends, Murasaki and me, but we don't lie to each other).

So they'd lost. And then Grey Wolf was standing right in front of him, daring him to strike. He'd gotten his spear back and everything, and Grey Wolf was just standing there, laughing, just asking for Centaur to up and clobber him over the head.

And I bet just about any one of the other good guys would've not only clobbered him but done it again, and used that spear to do what it was meant to do. And Grey Wolf would be a Lost Disk and he would've asked for it. Not to mention Mu would pitch a fit. Score another for the goodies.

But oh no, not Centaur. It wouldn't be "honorable."

I guess he was dumber than most everyone on the Montgomery. By the time they hit ten at the latest everyone on the Montgomery knew the only rule was you had to win.

* * *

You ever hear of Colart? Big city, there's this one human who made this stuff called Colart Tea that cost a lot. Montgomery-Lyman, first name Michael according to the rumors, used to hand some out to the pixies once in a while when he was in a really good mood. One of the ones that wasn't Ruth let me try some. I was five. It was awful. Still can't figure out why Montgomery-Lyman'd pay for that stuff or why the pixies'd like it.

The Montgomery was near the outside of Colart, with the other ranches, away from where the watching humans lived and where they made the tea. I think the theory was something like if Colart got attacked we'd all go out to defend it before any humans were in danger. We didn't mind. It made it that much easier to run away.

We'd not yet discovered the wonders of "If you don't give us something besides those stupid potatoes then you'll just have to find someone else for that tourney." We were mostly D or C-classers. Plenty of replacements if we got killed or threw tantrums.

I wasn't anything special there. There were a lot of Salamanders on the Montgomery. We got numbered just so they could tell us apart. But I don't think there're that many Salamanders on the Montgomery anymore...

* * *

There was someone on the Montgomery I called a friend-Murasaki's brother, which was how I knew Murasaki. Now I don't think we were friends at all. We just said we were because we didn't know a word for what it was.

We both knew the rules, we both had to win. He won in a way they liked. He was the first one to make B-class since the days of Montgomery-Lyman's father's owning the ranch had ended. Once he went on one tourney after another away from Colart, and they said they'd had to hire a couple of freelancing monsters to haul back all the prize money.

I fought all right for a C-classer (though I'd lost points with the powers that be for nearly killing that poor dumb widdle Ape), but I had to win in a different way. Most of the time they couldn't send anyone to the Punishment Room because I spent most of my ranch life in it. Some of the others made bets on "How many weeks before Rufus gets back in Punishment," with extra food as stakes. It became "How many days." Then "How many hours." Sooner or later they would've started making bets on "How many minutes." I'd gone before then, though.

We didn't talk a lot. It was just things that happened. Sometimes when I got out of Punishment, if he didn't have a drill or a tourney he'd be there waiting for me. Murasaki'd sometimes be along with him. That was how I started to know Murasaki. Sometimes when most of the ranch was living off potatoes someone would come up. They'd give me meat or fish, wrapped in paper. They'd say he'd sent it. Sometimes when the top performers were put on tablets I'd get ahold of someone to sneak half a fish into his stall. I'm not sure how many of those actually got there, though. Not a soft sweet fair place, the Montgomery.

Oh, if all this Phoenix stuff is right, then he's still around somewhere. Otherwise...

... I've no idea how he croaked, actually. Probably one of the other B-classers whacked him just too hard enough (just making sure to follow the rules and all that) and that was the end of _him_, boo-hoo. Accident, of course.

I couldn't ask Murasaki about that one. I went up to her and said, "What happened to your brother?"

She said, "What? What happened to him?"

I wouldn't know.

* * *

And now that Mu's gone they're all saying of _course _they would never do anything that wasn't the H-word. It's disgusting. You expect me to believe they wouldn't have taken that spear and killed Grey Wolf if they'd gotten so good a shot at it? There's nobody else like Centaur, a good thing for everyone else.

I think actually he might've gotten by quite well with Murasaki's brother. They'd talk to each other very quiet and civil-like and they'd call each other friends. But he got Captain Ruth.

I could tell he looked at me and wondered how it was possible I could even exist, how I could manage to be every single thing opposite to his honor stuff. It's just the way I am.

Oh, you're going to see him next. Then take him a message, why don't you.

Does he remember when I said I was going to kill him and tell Grey Wolf the kid did it? Like Grey Wolf would have believed me. Tell him I wouldn't have actually done it. Tell him I'dve just gone and gotten all the credit I was supposed to get. Tell him I was just making sure he wouldn't make a squabble about whose territory they were on or whatever.

Because, after all, rules are rules.


End file.
